I really wanted to play more Borderlands coop or to save another town in Din's Curse but instead I had one of those weekends where I forgot to shower, eat, and let most calls go unanswered all because I was so wrapped up in a game that I couldn't be pulled away. In other words, it was the perfect gaming weekend. It started on Friday when I tried some of the free versions of Minecraft, then I bought it on Saturday to try the latest 'in development' version. Then I had to buy another copy for my wife after she tried it.

I heard about Minecraft recently when they announced that the maps can potentially be bigger than planet earth.

Minecraft is a building game. Imagine if the whole world was made up of one foot square blocks. You can then build anything out of those one foot blocks. It also has things like flowing water, lava, and some blocks have different physics to them like gravel. Entire worlds are randomly created with mountains, caves, rivers, and populated by wilderness creatures. Its just a big sandbox that lets you do whatever you want and set your own goals.

The game has two modes of play.-Creative mode has unlimited resources and all you do is build. Its nice to play around with and to try building, but ultimately boring since you have no goals and not much to do.-Survival mode has monsters, crafting, and you need to mine or collect all your building materials.

I spent most of my time in Survival Mode. In this mode you build up your home out of necessity so that you can survive the nighttime when all hell breaks loose. All building materials need to be collected. You can also create armor, weapons, and other various things to help you survive. You can create farms for food or hunt for the food. Ultimately you need to create a mine to gather stone and metal materials. This is when it gets creepy. Its dark and you need torches. You never know when you might uncover huge underground chambers with lava flows, underground rivers, and enemies.

The graphics are weak, but the sense of exploring and the creative possibilities combined with the threat of dying makes for some compelling gameplay. Its amazing going from your starting hut to carving out a giant castle, farm, and a walled settlement. With multiplayer support and nearly infinite maps I can see some really fun emergent gameplay happening.

The game is still in alpha and you can only play the latest version if you buy it. There are some older (and more stable) free versions that lack many of the greatest features, but they are enough to see the potential. Also, don't judge the graphics too harshly until you've tried the game. The graphics are not even close to cutting edge, but the things you can create are still amazing to behold (like that underwater glass tunnel I created leading to my secret island citadel).

Its an interesting game for sure. Its weakness is only that it has no real direction other than survival and building just for the sake of building. It has huge creative potential, but if you're not feeling inspired it can feel grindy and pointless. Still though, its different enough to make it worth trying. The pre-order, which unlocks saves and the latest 'in development' version, only costs 10 Euros or about $14.00.

Its the potential of the game that has me excited. Multiplayer survival sounds like it will be fun. Infinite maps should be out any day now. I've also heard about so many cool ideas like seasons, vehicles, and alchemy. Notch, the developer, is already planning a Dungeons and Levers expansion that will let a player create a map with gears, pressure plates, and other mechanics to create a dungeon with, then lock it for others to adventure in. It almost reminds me of Dungeon Keeper.

Damn you. I read about this on RPS and managed to resist the lure, but my resolve is weakening now. You make it sound like a great game.

It's LOADS of fun Huw. The creative side if basically like Legos that you can live in. I like the "currently in beta" program where you chop trees to make wooden items, mine stone to make stone items, smelt ore and make metal items, farm, kill animals for meat or shear sheep for wool "game." But it is brutally hard and tends to really get nasty during the night time of the game. The monster are very very evil!

But it is brutally hard and tends to really get nasty during the night time of the game. The monster are very very evil!

I've seen quite a few people call this the scariest game they have ever played. I understand why. When you're playing it you are thinking about building and collecting, not fighting, so when you do run into an enemy its usually shocking as hell.

I remember when I first started I would lock myself in my hut at night. I would clear a small hole in the roof just so I could see when daylight comes. Then just when I think its safe I step outside and hear *twang* from a skeleton bow and just about crap myself. I thought I would get clever and open a window in the wall to see if any enemies were outside. As soon as I open it I hear the *sssssssssss* of a creeper about to explode. He would blow the whole wall off my hut leaving me open to *twang* *twang*. I eventually just said F-that and starting digging a mine straight down from my hut. Even that creeped me out since I only had the two starting torches and never found any coal to make more. When I finally had some coal I go home only to find another creeper in my hut *ssssssssss* *BOOOM* there goes the another wall of my hut.

Since then I've started playing in peaceful mode (no monsters) just long enough to build up a wall around my home. What an awesome game!

As I was optimizing and fixing bugs today, I found a few places where I was still using 32 bit floats instead of 64 bit floats. As a result of fixing this, the maximum surface area in Minecraft is now 4096 million square kilometers, or about eight times the surface area of earth.

That is assuming you have enough HDD space to hold all that data. I guess in multiplayer mode if you don't want to be found you can just head off in one direction for a thousand miles before you settle down.

Once he adds the Dungeons And Levers expansion we will be able to create a world for others to adventure in without destroying anything that was built. I can imagine there will be some really epic adventures or scavenger hunts that span some vast distances. I just *know* someone will make a Lord of the Ring style adventure to destroy the one ring. Besides the epic battles it would be a great setting for it.

It seems to me every block can be destroyed. With multiplayer, there's nothing stopping people from just going around digging up other people's blocks.

Are there ways to prevent that?

The servers must have some different roles that the admin can assign to people. I've joined a few multiplayer servers where I couldn't do anything. On the servers where people can change things I hear that griefing is a problem. I would assume it will be less of a problem with infinite maps.

The current alpha build of Minecraft is amazing. In the Survival mode, there is this combination of exploration, crafting, and combat that will keep you playing for hours and hours.

I don't have much time at the moment to go into details of what I've done in the game, but I suggest if you like sandbox environments with crafting and a little bit of farming, with a day / night cycle, flowing water and lava, and dynamically generated maps, you should buy this game immediately.

In my current world, I started out on the beach, and things didn't look very promising, it looked like I would need to take a really long hike to get to any coal in order to build torches. I went ahead and wacked down some trees with my fists of steel and took a look around. I built a crafting workstation and made myself a few wooden picks. I found a cliff face that looked like about 90 blocks up there was some coal. Through some creative mining I made my way up and secured 6 precious units of coal.

Night was starting to fall, so I headed back down to the beach, with the ocean it limited where an attack could come from. I quickly dug up some sand and formed some walls 3 blocks high, and secured some torches to the walls. I had no roof, no doors and no windows, but I had a cozy little 6x10 house.

While waiting for daylight to come I decided to dig down into the sand to see if I could locate some stone. Digging through sand can get a bit tricky thanks to gravity causing it to fall, so you have to be careful to not take out key supports. Thankfully I located stone just as I was getting to the point of having to dig under my walls which would have brought everything down on my head.

Now that I was into stone, I quickly mined enough stone to be able to craft a few stone picks, they would be much more effective than the wooden picks I had been using. After collecting a bit more stone, I built myself a roof...thankfully the sand held. I started the task of creating an underground lair. Thankfully it was daytime, so I headed back outside to get more wood. I was able to craft some doors, and so I now had a door on my house, and I began replacing the sand walls with the stone I had mined out from below. Once my walls were reinforced, I found that I had mined enough stone to build some stairs. At this point, my "house" was nothing more than a shell that opend up into a grand 5 block wide staircase that descended 8 blocks. Now that I was solidly into stone, it was time to start some hallways. I set up a crafting area, with a few furnaces and a storage chest.

It was getting a bit cold, so I headed back outside and beat up on some sheep, collecting precious wool that I was able to turn into some rudimentary clothing.

Back underground I decided to tunnel further inland, but much to my dismay the further I tunneled I began to hear eerie moans coming from behind the stone. I figured I had a ways to go until all of a sudden I mined through a layer of stone, opening into a large cavern, where I was greeted by multiple zombies, skeletons and a creeper...Perhaps I would need to rethink this underground lair...

I have been casting my gameplay in Minecraft every night for the past week on Justin.tv .

Right now I'm going through a huge underground cavern complex. I thought I had all of it cleared out until I saw a chasm going across to a darkened section. When I got over there, I found a seemingly endless stream of skeletons, zombies, spiders, and creepers. I'm going to stock up on weaponry, armor, and buckets of lava tonight around 10pm pacific time.

Wow, didn't see the simple liquid physics before, but seeing the lava flow and using it for impromptu barricades was a nice idea.

But Max, you really, really need to get yourself a bow. And some armor.

What is that dungeon delve anyway, just survival or free roam mode?

I had a bow, but monsters ate it.

That mode is survival. It's what the current "alpha" build is. Everything you saw with the exception of some makeshift bridges and steps was all dynamically generated by the game when I started the map.

If you were to start up a new game, there would be a whole new map to explore.

Basically right now the game is 100% free roam. You start off on a spot in a randomly generated world (of infinite size - it'll just keep generating lands if you start exploring) and you try to survive.

Enemies can spawn wherever there isn't light (which is very bad underground and at night in the 'overworld'), which is why it's vital to get some sort of home built quickly for yourself. From there, you just venture forth and do whatever you want.

Go punch Minecraft into Youtube. It's downright amazing what some people have created with the engine. Start with my link a few posts back.

Now, dare I buy this or not... I'm afraid I'd lose entire days to this game straight off.

Logged

"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

The $13 price tag is just about right. The game, as it is now, is pretty addictive. It's still just a giant sandbox with no real goal (other than the self-motivation to dig as deep as possible, craft all possible items and build some cool structures), but its more fun then I expected and I've already put about 5 hrs into it with no sense that I'm any where near burnt out with it.

Thanks a lot forum effect. I just purchased this and can't stop playing. So much for finishing my new book this week ... or next week.

Although the game isn't complete and it is pretty ugly, it is super addictive. I have tried not to look up crafting recipes, preferring to learn as I go but it is hard to remember everything. One thing that is annoying is that I'm having trouble finding coal.

I have been blown up a few times but really, it made me chuckle more than anything else.

Whoever mentioned the Mincraft guys working with the Dwarf fortress game nailed it. That would be the most badass game ever. Why would you ever need another game? hehe

The best way to find coal is to just explore a bit and look for a natural cave. I have generally seen deposits in those locations. One thing that I didn't realize was that you need a pick to get coal out of the stone. If you just punch the stone down, you don't get the coal out.

The simplest pick can be made with just wood. I won't spoil the recipe for you.